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This blog is about gaming, but D&D is top on my list, from D&D 5e, Pathfinder to good old AD&D 1e (where my roots come from!). I'm an Evil DM, I have been for many years, to the point folks enjoy my games and style but fear things in game. Paranoia is great and fuels a lot of awesome roleplaying situations with characters in game. Have a question? Feel free to contact me for advice about 1e, 5e or Pathfinder - ASKTHEDM(@)THEEVILDM(.)COM

For Vol 3 Issue 103, the crew sat down and reviewed the module as special treat for the show, so if you are interested in listening about it before downloading and looking at it, go ahead and click this links below: MP3 Download

Hiya everyone. I decided to run my face to face group through the custom campaign we are designing here in the OSRGaming community. Adventures take place in the kingdom of the black knight. We are using Moldvay rules as a most of the group was brand new to 1e and now B/X edition!

Recap:

The group of four characters, two Dwarves, a Cleric and a very ugly looking Elf, parted away from their homes to see out adventure, fame and glory. Upon their first night away, a massive storm ripped through the lands, sending hail to come crashing down on the land. The band of adventurers had to seek out shelter in a nearby Tor, in which they discovered that there was a well built room, paved in cobblestone and the walls covered in fancy designs. The room showing of age and dust, told the adventurers that no one has stepped foot inside this place in years. After exploring the night away, the group discovered that a group of goblins and hobgoblins had made their way down inside the place from the top of …

This week on the Roll for Initiative podcast, DM Will announced his contest and the prize is a copy of the AD&D 1E Reprints done by WOTC! Details of the contest are as follows: The Prize, the three core reprint books for AD&D 1E! a $100 value!

Submit to: RFIStaff(@)gmail(.)Com with the follow info:- Full name- Address- email address- Forum name at OSRGaming (if you have).

When I was on Amazon looking for some books, this book popped up in my side bar as recommended. It was a kindle edition and it was free, so I decided to give it a look, hey its free.

First off on Amazon the author spouts off this:

#1 in Free Roleplaying and Fantasy Kindle Books "January, February, and March 2012"#14 in Free Fantasy Kindle Books "January 2012"Top 50 and under in Free Fantasy Kindle Books "From January 2012 Onwards..."Outranked "Angry Birds" in Games on Kindle at one point.

This is a pen and paper tabletop roleplaying game, not a computer game. If you're looking for one of those, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere. I highly recommend the dungeon-crawling German rogue-like "Lost Labyrinth" which is free to download and a purely awesome game.

If you're looking for fiction, you're in luck! You will find the completely free comic fantasy novel "The End of The World" at the very back of…

Its been out for a long time, and it dates back as far as the Serenity RPG game, expanding into the Battlestar Galactica RPG and finally its own core rules, known as the Cortex Blue book core rules. You can read up on the Wiki for more details about the system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortex_System#The_Cortex_System This book is much like the D20 Modern book in a way that there is no real theme to it, its not fantasy, space, or even the world of gangsters. The good news is that you can take this book, or toolkit as I like to call it and make it into any game you want to play that night. Designed by the Margaret Weis productions team, this toolkit was a sure hit. Some features about the game: The system is your basic point-buy, skill based system more akin to Vampire than D&D (i.e. no classes). Characters have a series of general attributes (e.g. Strength) and specific skills (e.g. Guns). These are rated by a category of die: d2, d4, d6, d8, d12, d12 +d2 and keeps going.

Today I released the new Mazes and Perils, or should I say, new and improved M&P. With more levels, spells and some other adjustments. There is a brand new layout that was done by one of the users at OSRGaming.org forums, named Vile. He has worked on such things in the past, and offered to do it in his free time to make it look nice. I would like to personally thank him for his hard work, and effort, as he to was sick of all the "we can't create, but we sure can bash" people. So its a fully complete, up to level 12, Holmes inspired RPG. Enjoy!

This movie came up in my Netflix streaming today as a new add, under psychological thrillers, which I absolutely love to watch. Nothing like watching a movie that makes you sit on the edge of your seat and also have to think about it. Having done a quick look up on the film, it was influenced by Orson Welles' infamous radio production of "The War of the Worlds." Upon seeing that, I was in. I am all for a movie, that uses a few characters and a lot of misdirection, a bunch of rumors and a lot of sound effects. Which this movie does, as it revolves around 3 characters inside an old AM radio station in a small town called Pontypool, which apparently is located somewhere in the Ontario area. Slowly as the movie moves on, there is a bunch of unconfirmed reports to the radio station, of a mob of people attacking a doctor's office somewhere downtown. As the reports start coming in and they get some on the scene live phone calls, its apparent, sometype of "out break&quot…

So after listening to the Order 66 podcast, I decided, after bitching and crying, that I wanted to see this damn game and ordered the book. Not only did it take a week to even ship, the book came in this huge box 3 times the size of it. Made me laugh and then cry, as I realized what I paid in shipping. Thanks FFG!

The book itself is about the same as if I got one of my college class books, you know those books that you paid tons of money for, but wasn't the best quality.

Sure its full color, and has some pictures. Here is a couple of shots of the inside, the rules and the tables when building a character.

Here is the sticker sheet on the back, so you can make your own dice!

I haven't read it yet, but from the looks of it, it reminds me of a tech manual from school, and I can see this book falling apart after much usage.

BUT I love Star Wars, and I wanted to TRY it out. So the only sucker, would be me, if I didn't like it.

I was looking through the books the other day and reading about how magic users learn their spells and cast them. Each level has a "cap" to how many spells a MU can cast a day per level or should I say, can memorize and then cast per day. Now any spell found or gained over the max level of spell caster, is considered to be just a spell read off a scroll. The question that was flying around in my big empty head was, what is to stop a 4 level magic user from learning to use a spell that is much higher in level then he is used to? Is it the magic itself, not allowing a MU to learn that spell, because they haven't gained enough experience? Well, one would think, at 4th level, a MU would be experienced and confident enough to easily grasp a spell, memorize it and cast it.

Is the length of the spell the reason why? Why can't a 4 level MU, every night after studying his spells, read the higher level spell and break it down so he could make himself learn it? What's to sto…

Yup. You heard me. Apparently the news coming out of GenCon 2012 is that Fantasy Flight Games has released the new Star Wars RPG --- BETA TEST phase. Cool? Well, not so much. Why? Because they are selling it. Yes you heard me, Selling it. For a cool $30 USD you can BUY the beta rules soft-covered book.

What kills me is that the book is lacking a lot of the artwork, and is lacking a bit of a cinematic Star Wars theme. Let me show you what annoys me about this book, other then the fact the rules are subject to change, because of play testing.

"This limited edition, 224-page softcover rulebook provides you a chance to lead these galactic explorers. This is a complete and playable version of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, and (compared to the final version) it excludes only art and certain thematic material."The bold is directly from their website store, in fine print. $30! Come on, talk about robbing the cash cow! $30 is more like a full complete rules set!

So we all know what happened to the late Heath Ledger, and we all saw the Dark Knight with his awesome performance in it. One thing that did come to mind and I went around the web looking this up, is what Nolan's thoughts were on how there was no mention or talk about how all the inmates escaped, but the Joker did not. I understand Nolan was being respectful, and didn't want to be disrespectful to Heath, so he just left it out. Well I stumbled across this website, where Sam Saxton, has a cartoon drawing of what happened to the Joker, with some dark lighting, and some CGI, and laugh tracks, we could have had this 30 seconds:

OKAY. So today is my birthday (yay!), but I woke up to see this email in my box, saying I should check out this movie, called ORCS! An indepentant film about if Orcs actually were real and decided to come and kill us. The poster itself looks like it could be cool.

But after watching the trailer for it, it reminded me a very bad Shawn of the Dead, mixed with Super Troopers, and a touch of Army of Darkness. I am not sure if I would watch this movie, after doing a little more research from IMDB.com. Anyhow, here is the blurb about the movie and the trailer. The website for the movie doesn't exist anymore, so I guess it was a bomb (a 3.7 on IMDB). Tell me what you think? Would you see it?

When marauding orcs invade a US National Park, our collective fates lie in the hands of Ranger Cal Robertson and his side-kick, Volunteer Cadet Hobie, who must stop the wave of destruction before the whole world is overrun. Trailer:

Well, I caught the last half hour of the live feed from GenCon 2012, about what they will do with DND and what to expect. Good news did come out, that they will release previous editions.. in electronic media format. This could mean a few things. One, PDF's again, two, Maybe POD or three a subscription to DND insider or whatever they want to call it and say, here is all we got, but you can only view it online and you can't download it, this way we can control it.

They predict, the game will not be out for at least 2 years. 2 YEARS?! Wow this better be one hell of a game.

One thing that caught my attention, was this time they are allowing us (our characters) to shape the world of Forgotten realms. Where have I heard this idea from... oh wait, I know Paizo already has perfected this, and won the battle on this.

Other thoughts.

People keep screaming at me, "those things you don't like are optional", yeah I know this, but not everyone will follow it. Most people will be …

After reading through the DND Next or 5e, as some call it, I am getting a bit disappointed in the material. Why? Well, the most I can say is I am not happy in the direct the character creation is going. I do think the characters will be getting a little too powerful at the lower levels. There is also an issue that characters can interchange roles and be one "super class". Like a fighter, running around casting (minor) spells to kill things with out penalties.

I know its only round two of the play test and WOTC is still planning on giving us more based on the feedback on this. I will stick around for round 3 and see what it has to say, but so far I do not like a bunch of things. I wish I could say more, but actually I can't even though we all know that anyone reading this more then likely signed up for the play test...

So today the next round of D&D next came shooting into my email. I quickly downloaded it before all the geeks could jump on it and overload the server. It downloaded quickly (good job WOTC). Opened it up and it was interesting to see it went from the fancy play test stuff to basic words on a page with no real fancy lay out like on the first one. This to me felt like, now they were getting down to serious business.

This time instead of giving us just pregens, they have included how to make up a character from the start. Which I can say, is no different then when we played say 3E.

There was also a document, detailing what they changed and how to use this new play test packet. In this document, it detailed and broke down in each section what is new. For example, what rules changed or are new. What changed about Monsters, what changed about classes..etc.

I do have to say I am impressed with go around, as it feels more like a real beta test and they mean business, unlike the first round w…

So I got the email, everyone in the D&D world has been waiting for today. The play test of D&D Next email in my inbox at 930am CST. Of Course clicking on the link, resulted in nothing but a long hang time until it gave me can not open message.

Apparently Wizards screwed up on the first link, apologizing to its fans in the forums and sent out a new link, which also hung.

Finally after a bunch of tries. I got in, signed the agreement and got the documents.

I popped open the documents, and it gives you 5 pregens. Fighter, two Clerics (a healer and a battle like), a rogue and a wizard. As well as a mini adventure, a bestiary, a "how to play document" and finally a DM Guidelines document.

After reviewing them, and reading over the documents carefully, its basically Third Edition D&D well organized. WHAT?

This is what we waited for? Wizards to bring out 3E rules, nicely organized for us?

Today, I had a chance to chat with Bruce Heard from TSR's past for the Save or Die Podcast. We chatted about how he got into gaming. His story about getting into gaming and finally working for TSR was quite interesting.

During the interview, we also chatted about Mystara, and one of my favorite box sets, Hollow World.

All in all a wonderful interview with some nice insight how things were done back in the day. IF you are interested in listening in, check out SoD #47: Bruce Heard Interview for more details

Today I was looking through some prices on amazon.com for 1e books. What did I notice since the announcement of the 1E reprints by WOTC? Prices on the rise, I mean like outrageous prices. Not only that, but used book prices are pushing up. After hearing from various people there used book orders had been returned, I went on amazon and ordered a ad&d 1e phb, dmg, and mm. All prices had been under $7, and I made sure to note the company names. Sure enough, a day later my orders were refunded, and canceled. What the hell? Do these people really think because the reprints are going for so much, they can jack up the prices of these old musty used books? I indirectly blame Wizards for this, because they knew, doing what they would, would only inflate the current market prices. Anyone who says they wouldn't is a liar. So the prices have gone up,for a book that doesn't compare to the shit being rolling out by wizards, or ccp, or any company...quality style wise. Now a new perso…

Today I grabbed a copy of l5r 2e, for $3. The gm and players guide. I've played this edition of the game, but I am sure its similar to 3E and 4e for that matter. I've always enjoyed the Oriental Adventures book from AD&D 1e, and glad this whole thing kind of spawned out of it. I am also sick of hearing that Oriental is a racist term and I shouldn't support that book. First off, it was the '80s when this came out, the term was acceptable. Then Polictial correctness came along in the mid '90s and anyone who is anyone, that got a hair crossed the wrong way on their ass, started shouting and bring up lawsuits. Now suddenly the term Oriental is offensive. I can see the point of it being offensive IF USED that way. But I am not using it that way, I a describing a book and a setting... not a person.

As of recent I have been looking over some old games from the '80s and noticed a pattern. A pattern we all used in the games and we took for granted, and more then like fudged numbers or just picked it. What is it you say? Well random rolls for character generation. I am talking about games like Marvel RPG, or TMNT. Where you took your dice, and rolled it, where it landed, was the start of a new character for you. It was fun, making a story for the odd character got "stuck" with. I look back and some of my old characters and laugh. In playing TMNT, I had a Camel Ninja, that spook with a british accent, and he acted like he was part of the royal family. Ah it was fun. Just thought I would share this moment that I was thinking with you all.

In efforts to make the Mazes and Perils free clone rpg noticed, I've decided to start making up new monsters for use with the game. Of course this monster can be used with any fantasy edition of gaming.

A reanimated hand is a large hand and wrist, normally with a giant fancy ring on its index finger, which it props up as if it was a head while it crawls around on the finger tips.
The origins of the hand and where it came from is unknown, but legends and rumors say it was a hand ripped from an once power immortal that went crazy with power.
The reanimated hand are immune to sleep, poison, paralysis and disease like undead.The Reanimated hand can read and write any and all languages, but can not speak. Reanimated hands have the ability of blind-sight and can sense all opponents around it.
The Reanimated hand, has the …

I was looking up show notes for RFI and stumbled across this one in an old dragon magazine (40), and was considering it for one of my games.

Crossbow of Multiplication. May be either light or heavy, and uses the range of fire of the proper class. However, the weapon creates its own bolts. These are treated as +0, +0 magic bolts but can hit any target capable of being damaged at all by physical weapons (even those, for example, which can only be hurt by +3 weapons or by blunt weapons). Bolts disappear after hitting or missing. On each shot, roll a 20-sided die for the number of bolts fired, subtracting 5. Results of 5 or less are treated as 0 (that is, there is a 25% chance the crossbow will fire nothing at all—otherwise, it fires 1 to 15 bolts). The bolts spread out in an even cone in a forward direction, from a single bolt straight ahead to 15 in a 90-degree cone. Therefore, unless the target is very wide or very close, no more than 1 or 2 bolts will strike a single target. After read…

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What's this Blog about?Nothing is as it seems in my games, so feel free to show up in my game with your books and TRY to rules lawyer me, it will only result in another character soul taken. Remember you are the Dungeon Master and ANYTHING can be done as long as you can dream it up because you rule the game, not the other way around! IF the book doesn't list it, doesn't mean its not possible, think folks, you are the DM, do as you please, its your world! Over 1000+ character souls taken as of this date!